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Accademia Gallery, Florence, June - December 2008 - Giovanni da Milano exhibition
An interesting complement to the 'Giotto's Legacy' exhibition running at the Uffizi, the Galleria dell’Accademia's exhibition of the works of Giovanni da Milano throws further light on the 'Ice Age' in Renaissance art, between the death of Giotto in the 1340s and the first flowering of the true Renaissance, toward the end of the century. Giovanni di Jacopo di Guido da Caversaccio was a 'foreigner' in Florence, hence the nickname 'John of Milan'.
An outsider, hailing from Lombardy, and probably born in the 1320s, he is considered derivative of Giotto, who had pioneered an opening up of painting, away from the flat surfaces, lack of perspective and characterless iconic faces of Gothic art, although Giovanni himself came from the Gothic tradition. Looking at a work such as the Birth of the Virgin, in the Rinuccini Chapel of Florence's Santa Croce, you are struck by how he has brought movement and three-dimensional relief to the flattened, tableau-like scene. We are not yet into the dazzling uses of perspective and depth of picture plane that we will reach with masters such as Raphael and Leonardo, but Giovanni's work prefigures the move - and certainly gives the lie to mid and late 14th century Florentine art as being a retreat from Giotto's experiments, the art as frozen as the fields in this, Europe's 'mini Ice Age'.
Among Giovanni's best known works are a polyptych made for Ognissanti in Florence (1363), now separated and scattered, sadly, and depicting saints and scenes of the Creation. The earliest known work by Giovanni is the polyptych with Madonna and Saints (1355) painted for the Prato Spedale della Misericordia. The earliest signed and dated work is the Man of Sorrows panel (1365) in the Accademia, Florence. While our Birth of the Virgin is part of a series of frescoes decorating both sides of the Rinuccini Chapel in Santa Croce, Florence, and showing the lives of Mary and Mary Magdalene.
Giovanni da Milano (c1320 to c1375) runs at Florence's Galleria dell’Accademia from 10 June to 8th December.
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Reserve Florence Academy tickets (Michelangelo's David)
Ticket types, opening times, how to gain admission
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